THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

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THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY
"A married man is seven years older in his thoughts the first day." 81 "It is
often seen that bad husbands have good wives." (Bacon was an exception.)
"A single life doth well with churchmen, for charity will hardly
water the ground where it must first fill a pool. ... He that hath wife
and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to
great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief." 32 Bacon seems to have
worked too hard to have had time for love, and perhaps he never quite
felt it to its depth. "It is a strange thing to note the excess of this passion.
. . . There was never proud man thought so absurdly well of himself
as the lover doth of the person beloved. . . . You may observe that
amongst all the great and worthy persons (whereof the memory remaineth
either ancient or recent) there is not one that hath been , transported
to the mad degree of love; which shows that great spirits and great busi-
ness do keep out this weak passion." 33
He values friendship more than love, though of friendship too he can
be sceptical. "There is little friendship in the world, and least of all between
equals, which was wont to be magnified. That that is, is between
superior and inferior, whose fortunes may comprehend the one the other.
... A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the
fullness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause
and induce." A friend is an ear. "Those that want friends to open them-
selves unto are cannibals of their own hearts. . . . Whoever hath his
mind fraught with many thoughts, his wits and understanding do clarify
and break up in the communicating and discoursing with another; he
tosseth his thoughts more easily; he marshaleth them more orderly; he
seeth how they look when they are turned into words; finally he waxeth
wiser than himself; and that more by one hour's discourse than by a
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day's meditation."
In the essay "Of Youth and Age" he puts a book into a paragraph.